From left to right, George Nield, Associate Administrator of Commercial Space Transportation, FAA; Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator; Doug Comstock, Director, Innovative Partnerships Program, NASA; David Masten, CEO, Masten Space Systems; Phil Eaton, VP, Operations, Armadillo Aerospace; U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX); Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO, X PRIZE Foundation and Mitch Waldman, VP, Advanced Programs [...]

Masten Space Systems Qualifies for $1 Million Prize FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Mojave, California – October 30, 2009 – Masten Space Systems successfully qualified for first place in Level Two of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Wednesday. Flying a brand new vehicle named XA-0.1E (nicknamed Xoie), Masten demonstrated their ability to build, debug and fly [...]

This is where we will update things for most of this morning. Bigger events will get their own posts. — 2nd Leg Video from today: — Xoie on Pad A after successfully flying both legs of the Challenge. — The X goes on the pad (note the patch made to the concrete. Previous tests on [...]

Ed: This was taken from an ARocket update by Joel Scotkin on October 8. Some of the information is now outdated. Xoie (XA0.1e) Major Components RTK The Novatel RTK differential GPS worked amazing well. Real 2cm positioning was the main competitive advantage we thought we could nail for the LLC flights, and was clearly worth [...]

(This is from an ARocket post by Joel) Mr. Tank For Xoie we needed bigger tanks than on Xombie, but smaller than the 36inch tanks we had in house that were originally for a four-engine design. So we kicked off two science projects. We knew we really needed to squeeze for both weight and pressure [...]

(This is a combination of Joel’s ARocket post and some more details from me — Jon) 750-3 Engine Development At the time of my last detailed update, back in June, we had just flown our 60 second hover on our first aluminum chamber (the -2AS). A while after the flight, we disassembled the engine, and [...]

(Much of this is from an email Joel Scotkin sent to ARocket on Thursday) We had a tremendous day yesterday, and the team did an absolutely phenomenal job. We’ve been a little bit quiet during the competition period, but (especially given all the press around yesterday – Bloomberg turned our office into a broadcast studio with XoiE in [...]

Ben and Michael were guests on Spacevidcast’s show last night. Michael did the typical pointy haired marketing thing but Ben stole the show by taking his laptop on a tour of the shop and the first ever public viewing of Xoie (“XA0.1E”):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Masten Space Systems Successfully Completes Lunar Lander Challenge Mojave, California – October 8, 2009 – Masten Space Systems successfully completed level one of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge X Prize Wednesday. The 715lb vehicle originally named XA0.1B – referred to as “Xombie” – completed two flights to qualify for the $150,000 [...]